man, and the rejection of the lie in the search for truth can only be inspired by the culpable rashness of men of intellect. So slow, however, is the substitution of truth for falsehood, that a few simple lies will for ages to come continue to gild millions of existences.' It is not to be expected that posterity will take a view essentially different or more enlightened than that of the present hour. Posterity is impartial only when it is indifferent ; that which no longer interests it, it promptly and irrevocably forgets. The discourse that follows is, in effect, a beautifully written supplement to to the pessimistic demonstration in Flaubert's 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' of the extreme slenderness of the point of contact between erudition or scientific truth and the great struggling mass of humanity. In his peaceable disdain of mankind, Bergeret attains perhaps as near as possible to the superb resignation contained in that notable sentence with which La Bruyère opens his caractère de l'homme:'

'Ne nous emportons point contre les hommes, en voyant leur dureté, leur ingratitude, leur injustice, leur fierté, l'amour d'euxmêmes et l'oubli des autres. Ils sont ainsi faits, c'est leur nature.'

It is not merely, however, as the theory of a recluse that Bergeret's nihilism is exhibited, for it reaches its transcendent climax in connection with the one definite incident (apart from the intrigues of the various candidates for the see of Turcoing) round which the whole 'Histoire Contemporaine' revolves. Every lover of Anatole France is familiar with the details of a scene which it were impossible, after him, to describe. It is enough to say that the conjugal mishap of M. Bergeret is treated with an originality which exhibits the writer's ironical powers at their very highest.

The reflections with which M. Bergeret reclaims his normal imperturbability of spirit afford a bird's-eye view of his whole attitude of mind. In words not at all dissimilar to those which Jérôme Coignard might have used, he fortifies himself with the thought that our pride is the primary cause of our miseries, that we are dressedup apes, who have gravely applied ideas of honour and virtue to situations to which they are wholly inappropriate, that the world (as Pope Boniface VIII. rightly held) makes a great fuss of a very small matter, and that Mme. Bergeret and M. Roux were in reality as unworthy of nicely calculated praise or blame as a couple of chimpanzees. His sense of humour was too strong for him to disguise the close relationship which existed between himself and this pair of primates. But he differentiated himself as being a

meditative chimpanzee, and from this distinction it may not be denied that he derived a considerable amount of satisfaction.

After all, he concludes, the greatest service that one can render one's fellow-mortals is to recall to them their native ignominy, to humiliate them, to show the ephemeral character of their work, the futile imbecility of their pride. Brought back to the true sentiment of their condition, their existence might perhaps be rendered happy enough. But they must always bear in mind that they are no more than a kind of leprosy, a morbid growth, a race of vermin upon the mouldy surface of a little ball which turns awkwardly round a yellow sun already half gone out.

In the ideas of Coignard and Bergeret we probably get the closest view attainable of the deliberate conclusions of the subtlest and most refined artist and thinker of our time. As a sceptic, M. France doubts everything, and in all things discovers the secret defect; as a dilettante he amuses himself by the constant change and succession of forms which men are so curiously apt to denominate progress. But, starting from the pessimistic conviction of the incurable badness and weakness of humanity, he is finally touched by the wretchedness and instability of human destiny, and ends by demanding that men should judge one another with a 'scetticismo caritatevole.'1

Sceptical and even cynical though the majority of his later work is, M. France's judgments are never uncharitable, and the element of compassion is rarely absent. Few passages in the 'Histoire' are more delightful than those in which he dwells upon the humblest aspects of life. One of the pleasantest glimpses that we have of Bergeret is the scene in which, while reposing under his favourite ormes du mail and meditating in his usual depreciatory manner upon the rhetorical militarism of the eighth book of Virgil and the grotesque manner in which certain Latin poets have been overrated, he encounters the chemineau, or tramp, named 'Pied d'Alouette.' He has a ready sympathy with the poor jail-bird, who has nothing dangerous about him, unless it be his rooted belief in happiness. Where, then,' says the professor, are the happy ones to be found?' 'In the farmhouses,' is the prompt reply. Bergeret got up and placed a half-franc in Pied d'Alouette's hand. 'You think, Pied d'Alouette, that happiness is to be found under a roof, in a chimney corner, or a feather bed. I thought you had more good sense.' The poor chemineau 1 Vittorio Pica, Letteratura d'eccezione, 1899, 288.

6

takes the place of the cobbler in Lucian's famous dialogue upon the vanity of riches, while Bergeret, ruminating upon the dry scraps of learning in his 'Vergilius Nauticus,' is left wondering where the happiness of erudition comes in. Charming, again, as a pendant to the vignette of Bonnard and his cat is Bergeret's meditation over a canine foundling which he adopts and befriends with an unaffected sympathy:

"Il est joli !" dit la servante.

"Non, il n'est pas joli," dit M. Bergeret. "Mais il est sympathique, et il a de beaux yeux. C'est ce qu'on disait de moi,' ajouta le professeur, “quand j'avais le triple de son âge et pas encore la moitié de son intelligence. Sans doute, j'ai depuis lors jeté sur l'univers une vue qu'il ne jettera jamais. Mais au regard de la vérité absolue, on peut dire que ma connaissance égale la sienne par sa petitesse. C'est comme la sienne, un point géométrique dans l'infini . . .'

"Il faut lui donner un nom."

La servante répondit en riant, les mains sur le ventre, que ce n'était pas difficile.

'Sur quoi M. Bergeret fit intérieurement cette réflexion, que tout est simple aux simples, mais que les esprits avisés, qui considèrent les choses sous des aspects divers et multiples, invisibles au vulgaire, éprouvent une grande difficulté à se décider même dans les moindres affaires.'

It will be seen that, far as M. France has travelled in other respects since he achieved his first great triumph with 'Bonnard,' his ironic temper is still qualified by the same deep compassion for the weak and the humble. The juxtaposition of the two qualities is elevated into an article of faith by the writer in his admirable book of Pensées (Le Jardin d'Épicure,' 1895).

'Plus je songe à la vie humaine, plus je crois qu'il faut lui donner pour témoins et pour juges l'Ironie et la Pitié... L'Ironie et la Pitié sont deux bonnes conseillères: l'une en souriant nous rend la vie aimable; l'autre qui pleure, nous la rend sacrée.'

To avoid a weak compliance with the vulgar practice of eulogy was in Lucian's opinion the first and most imperative duty of the historian. In his 'Histoire Contemporaine' M. France has most emphatically not fallen into this pitfall. He has nowhere recklessly flattered his contemporaries; he is never the sycophant of his own generation. The publicists of the hour seem, in fact, to have irritated M. France by their blatant optimism, much as the charlatans and the thaumaturges of Syria

and Greece, with the metallic timbre of their voices and the majesty of their long beards, afflicted the satirist of Samosata seventeen hundred years ago. In England, where we are often abused by a foreign press, but have not, like our neighbours, the advantage of being persistently and solemnly lectured upon our delinquencies, the need for a contemporary historian would seem to be even greater than in France. As a corrective to the monotony of those rhapsodies upon our noble selves, with which every paper and platform in the land is for ever resounding, the value of an English satirist of the calibre of M. Anatole France could hardly be overrated.

His tableau of modern French society is a satire of the most uncompromising severity; but is its severity greater than its substantial truth? M. France's credibility gains enormously from the fact that he is in no possible sense a critic who has failed. In England we are, of course, far from unfamiliar with the pessimistic tone that he most naturally adopts. It is scattered up and down the author of the Whirlpool,' and it reaches a very poignant note in Amy Levy's 'Minor Poet.' One is perhaps rather inclined to associate this heartfelt disdain of an unappreciative world with the mental processes of the minor poet, though in the case of the greatest of men the conjunction of bitterness and failure is sufficiently common. The bitterness of Swift was, in part at least, due to this cause, and the philosophic despair of Bolingbroke was in the main perhaps the despair of office. But Anatole France is not in any sense a failure-he, a man of humble birth, a native of the Quai Malaquais, who has by the sheer force of wit scaled the barriers of exclusiveness and entered the most aristocratic coterie of the Académie. From his youth he was très livresque, and his early books are characterised by an erudition from which he distils a honey that has always a certain acridity of flavour. But it is in his latest series of volumes, upon every page of which is impressed his profound knowledge of human nature, that the doctrine of Nihilism stands out so boldly as the fruit of his mature reflections not only upon books but also upon men and The commerce of books and the habit of intense reflection and self-analysis have fitted him in a degree that has never been excelled to fulfil the function of an author as he has specially conceived it-as that of an ironical critic, namely, who from a quiet and sheltered nook of observation can meditate at his ease upon the clamour and the folly-occasionally pathetic, but more often purely ridiculous of his fellows in the dusty market-place. THOMAS SECCOMBE.

women.

WARDERS OF THE WEST.

IN 1871, after his famous tour through the North-West, Captain Butler recommended the appointment of a civil magistrate or commissioner with power to hold courts at various points in the North-West Territories. He also suggested that this officer should be supported by a force of a hundred mounted men, specially recruited for service on the high prairies. It was not, however, until 1873 (when the Modoc war was in progress on the other side of the international boundary and an Indian scare' was at its height in Manitoba) that these recommendations were carried out by the Dominion authorities and the North-West Mounted Police established for the protection of the settlers. In 1874 the number of these soldier-policemen was increased to 300; a few years later there were 500 on the roster; and in 1885, when the 'Men of the Movement' rebelled under Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, the force was put on a war footing and numbered a full 1,000, without counting 'special' constables. In 1894, however, the establishment was cut down to 750 all told, and a further reduction would have been made two years ago but for the rush to Klondike and the consequent necessity of sending large detachments to the Yukon. Last year there were 184 officers and men in that country and 548 in the North-West Territories.

The Mounted Police officers are: a Commissioner and an Assistant-Commissioner and (to each of the ten divisions, A, B, C, &c. &c.) a superintendent and two inspectors. At Regina, the headquarters, there are two additional inspectors, the one acting as quartermaster and the other as paymaster. Five surgeons

look after the health of the men at the five chief divisional posts, and a veterinary sergeant is attached to each division to look after the herd,' i.e. the horses belonging to the division. The pay of these officers is as follows:

As regards men and non-commissioned officers, a staff-sergeant receives from $1,25 to $2 a day, a duty-sergeant $1, corpo